Tea by the river (March 25th 2007)

I was wrong. The Screature can't have been at Coniston doing things with string for the weekend, as on the next day (after GC) she came with us to Hesket Newmarket for a pre-lunch stroll, to Caldbeck and back.

I guess it's really a wrinklies walk as there are no steep bits. You can't get lost and you can go for "a nice cup of tea" half way round! Still, on a sunny Sunday in March it's a pleasant change from being hauled up Great Cockup (snigger snigger).

Being at a low level, the smells sort of linger longer. I suppose they don't have as much breeze to waft them away. We started at Hesket Newmarket. It's where Hairy used to go every Wednesday night to the Crown Inn's curry club.

(You might have guessed. It also brews its own beer. Predictable really, given H's taste. BUT it's also been visited a coupla times by Charlie Boy. Yup, the Queen's son has popped in for a swift half and chat with the locals when the pressure of being the heir apparent gets too much for him. I don't think he's bought a round though.)


Passing through the throngs of Godsquadders on their way to a pray-in at Hesket chapel, we soon found ourselves alone again and heading for the Cald Beck. It's really peaceful and on a sunny day quite warm. We found a great picnic spot but had no fud for a picnic, so we just splashed about in the river while H & S played pooh sticks off the bridge - badly! There just wasn't enough water and the bridge was too skinny! You need a really wide bridge like the one in Caldbeck, to play properly - cos just when you think your stick has been taken by an otter to build its home, there it comes bobbing along. On their bridge, by the time they'd turned around the sticks had already gone!



Io manages a clear round in the cross country section!

H then took us on the muddiest path in the Lakes. He kept saying it was the muddiest path over and over, which got very tedious and made me feel like biting his bum. They were in wellies so I don't know what the fuss was about, anyway.

In Caldbeck, the S did the retail therapy bit in Priest's Mill, while H went and got tean cake and sat in the cafe garden, waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

I don't think the S does it deliberately, it's just that when she goes shopping she enters a new temporal reality where real time no longer exists.

H had drunk three cups of tea and ett his cake before she arrived. Luckily he'd kept her tea warm by wrapping his hat and spare hat round the teapot to make an ad hoc tea cosy. It worked! [And yes, I did say "spare hat" - don't ask.] There was more retail on the way back, at the old Blacksmith's gifte shoppe (!). It's a good job there aren't tea shops and retail therapy joints on the fells, we'd take all day getting anywhere.




Guess where we had lunch? No. Not the Crown. H had booked 'em in for Sunday Lunch at the Sun at Bass again. And, we got more treats from the landlady - she's really, really nice!

What a Great Cockup! (March 24th 2007)

I didn't believe the name when I heard it. Cockup! Great Cockup!

But according to Hairy a "cock" was short for woodcock and "up" meant valley, so Great Cockup is Great Woodcock Valley (from the old English).

Not as much fun like that, is it?

How to look silly in the Fells. Lesson one...

It's in the crinkly bits behind Skiddaw, where the H often goes and never meets anyone (except world triple jump champion Jonathan Edwards and his son near Longlands! See the Great Scafell entry!)

Anyway, the Screature was at Coniston Museum again, doing things with string (sewing) and we were footloose and fancy free for the weekend. He could have had loose women, loud music and vast quantities of alcohol but he settled for a nice stroll up a mountain, instead. [Actually, I don't think the LW, LM & VQA are on his radar!]

We got passed by a clump of yomping chaps at the start of the walk who went straight up the Burn Tod path. I had a little chuckle, cos we were heading in roughly the same direction but the path we were on didn't do masses of climbing just to come back down again! They were a-striding out for England, but round the bend we were back in front of them! He He He

I love it when that happens.

Anyway our walk was taking us round the foot of Burn Tod to Trusmador and then up the back of GC. It was brill. Totally deserted until Trusmador, then we hit a mini Piccadilly Circus of the fells. There were bods springing up from everywhere! The H.ster claimbed a bit of the side of Trusmador, found a comfy ledge and had a sanger while we counted the hewmings below. Sixteen people came through while he was stuffing his face. I'm not sure how many saw us, perched, vulture like on the towering sides of the coll, waiting to fire our ambushing arrows down on them, but we certainly saw them. And heard them! The acoustics must be weird cos you could hear, really clearly, everything they were saying to each other. Sadly it was all dull stuff, no plots to kill the king or let enemy U-boats know shipping movements, or interesting things that we could have ambushed them for.

Trusmadoor without people.

When a mum and her three brats came screaming down off Meal Fell we knew it was time to go. GC is another of those fell top cricket pitches. No crags or rocks or interesting stuff. Great smells, and some long dead unfound grouse. H thought the views were great but, you know, a view is just a view to a dog! You can't really smell it!

We found a grouse butt (Io thought it meant its bum!) which was lined with stones. Very posh. H saw Chapelhouse reservoir and thought about making it part of a walk for The S. at Easter. It smelled different to Overwater which was odd as they are fed by the same river. Perhaps its the manmadeness of Chapelhouse that makes it smell different.

Lunch was ett at the Sun Inn, Bassenthwaite Lake. A great spot. Hairy ordered extra chips for us and when they came out, the landlady had brought us some bits of bacon too. She's nice! We sat outside on the benches and some touristy types started talking to Hairy and then feeding us the remains of their lunch. They were nice too! They wanted to know if you could walk to St Bega's church, so Hairy was able to tell 'em a good circle walk that went there and through Dodd Wood. We took The S's bof brother and family on it last summer.

Here I'm singing "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!"

A very mini localised blizzard (March 18th 2007)

We went to Hairy's mum's house for a visit. On the Saturday he made a startling discovery, the Nag's Head's owners were moving! Shock Horror! No more meat and tatie pie or liver and onions! Well, not to fret, as they say, they've only moved about two miles down the road to the Plough at Low Bradfield. Panic over! Bradfield Ales will be going with them.

In order to celebrate, H took us on the walk we did when we found a wasps' nest. We did that in the summer of 2004. Just before the two of them went to Australia for two months and left us in doggy prison! That was the fourth time they've done that to me! (The same number as happened to Great Aunt Gaia!) But I digress.
This is the other pub in High Bradfield it's the Old Horns and does great food and beer too! It was too early for beer when we got moving. The dynamic duo are leading the way. Well, I am - it looks like Io's off on a wander.

It was really sunny when we set off, but no sooner had we left the safety and shelter of High Bradfield church that it started snowing! Yes, I did say snowing. Cute, fluffy, little flakes that spiralled down delicately onto Io's nose. Where she ate them! It stopped after a bit.

That is, after a bit of standing inside a holly bush so we wouldn't get wet. (He'd not brought his waterproofs! The loony!) As we walked under Rocher Edge, you could have believed we'd made the whole think up. Unless you looked across to the Strines Inn. Or rather, to where the Strines Inn should have been, as a huge (nay ginormous) grey cloud full of snow was edging its way along the two reservoirs, heading for Agden (the one next to High and Low Bradfield).

Crossing stiles in a single bound is just one of my many acomplishments... Look, it's sunny again! I don't believe it!
Hairy put a spurt on then and we zoomed across the grassy paddocks under Rocher Edge, then along the old farm tracks by the ruined buildings, crossing the main Bradfield to Bolsterstone road and eventually we arrived at the moorland area of Agdenside. Here, the snow hit us. Just as we were stranded in no man's land with no cover or shelter anywhere.

Now, you remember the madness mentioned in an earlier entry? Well, I don't know if it was that kicking in, or just the plain desire to stay dry, but hairy took off like Io with her bum on fire. He was running over the moorland path, leaping heather and tussock grass. Dodging millstone grit boulders. Until we made the edge of Agdenside wood, in next to no time. Here, we went through the gate, and in the lea of the wood under an overhanging pine tree branch, alongside a drystone wall, we sat down and waited for the snow to stop.

It was just like that horizontal rain on Sail Fell in Cumbria, except here it was horizontal snow. It didn't last very long, (about 15 minutes) but it left everything white over and for the fifteen minutes of Arctic weather you couldn't see the wall at the far side of the field! We were snug bug ruggly under the tree branch, next to the wall, in the lea of the wood but I wouldn't have liked to have been out in it!
This is the wondeful sheltering spot. It kept us dry for 15 minutes, so here's its fifteen minutes of fame! Hairy sat on the sticky-out stone to the left of the post. (That's too much detail, really, isn't it?)

Once the humungous cloud had moved over, heading towards Damflask and Sheffield, the sun came back out again, and apart from the obvious scattering of white stuff everywhere, you'd never have known it had been snowing. Even more so by the fact that after about half an hour only the snow that wasn't in the sun was left, all the rest had vanished!

Even weirder, in Oughtibridge, on the other side of the hill, there'd been no snow at all. Not a sausage! The Screature didn't believe old Hairyface until he showed her the pictures!



Here's a picture taken after Hairyface gave his head a good scratching!

The H.ster surprised me with his running. I didn't think he was up to it, or fit enough - to be honest. I guess it must be climbing all them bumps with us that does it. Certainly you could tell he knew what he was doing, but then he does claim to have run a couple of marathons in his youth. I guess that means we're the ones who are responsible for his health and fitness. A pair of doggy fitness instructors, that's us! [NO. I said Doggy, not Dodgy!]

We were Sailing.. (March 4th 2007)

Wowzer.


The Screature was at Higham this weekend, so in a fit of inventive genius, (did I really write that?) the H.ster decided we'd go for a swift stroll up Sail Fell before picking her up after lunch on Sunday. Round, up, down, back. Bang. One hour. Tops.

Well, yes, we did the whole round, up, down, back, bang, in an hour. But not tops. More like bottoms, cos old mother nature wasn't playing cricket with us at all.

It howled a gale. So much that even we found it hard to keep our footing on the top. (And we do have two extra, compared to Hairyface!) Then she threw horizontal water at us. Not rain. Rain falls downwards, this came sideways. It stung my ears. I was so pleased when we turned the corner and had it at our backs instead of in our faces.

This is me watching the weather while Io just poses. If he'd looked at the sky instead of taking pictures, H would have seen what was coming, too

The H was all redfaced and shiny. He was really enjoying it. He kept opening his coat out and letting the wind catch it and blow him along. (I believe I may have mentioned his mental age in a previous entry!)

It was the first time we'd been up here too. Io wasn't happy at getting all wet and cold, but H promised we'd be back when it was sunny. And calm. Then we could walk round the field archery course his mate Simon had set up across the valley. (That's hairy Simon, who used to have the band.)



I was tempted to be sarcastic, but I refrained because I am refined! (Anyway it looked like it could be really pleasant if the elements weren't against you.) Here's a view across the end of Bass. Lake towards Binsey. The rain was just waiting round the next bend...

He's mad! He's mad! (Feb 24th 2007)

He puts on stupid hats.
He says really daft things. (In funny voices.)
He wears seriously silly trousers.
He drinks beer, but wees out twice as much as he's drunk.
He's diabetic but is addicted to chocolate.
He's a loony.

When we go walking if there's something to climb on, over, under or round, yep - he does it.
He'll jump across chasms, swim in lakes, climb up sheer rock faces. He's had a heart attack, but has that stopped him?

No!

How old is he? Well ... I ain't gonna say, but it's not young! (OK, he's not quite a wrinkly, yet!)

When we went to Loweswater he spent ages on a rope swing that went out over the lake.

A rope swing! We were so embarrassed.

Luckily, Loweswater is dead quiet and not many people stroll along it during a wet morning in February. Bl**dy good job.

I was wondering what was up, when we went past the usual car park for Crummock and the Kirkstile. He was off on a voyage of discovery. (Well, not really as he has been here since 1991, so he does know it pretty well, I'd guess.)

He was taking us on a voyage of discovery.

A circumnavigation of the faorementioned LW.

It's the piddling one of the three in the Lorton valley, and half of the round route is on the road, which is rotten, but I'm wandering off.

Io and I had not been here before and the new smells were brill. Lots of 'em. At first mainly scared sheepy type smells. But they're always blooming scared. Stupid creatures. Followed by damp stuff type smells. You know, damp leaves, trees grass - that sort of thing. Even the path had a damp dusty smell to it.

Then poohy type smells (sheep again). Then the water itself, it always smells nicer than the big flat stuff at the coast, and it tastes better, too!

He did the usual routine of getting us to sit on benches and snapped away. We're getting dab hands at that, you know. OK, this is a bridge, not a bench, but I'm sure there was a huge fish in there, somewhere.
Then, by the bothy, in the middle of the wood he found the swings.
Well, there was no getting him off them.
He was like a big kid. (He is a big kid!) I mean, look at him here!

We musta been there ages and ages.

Anyway, it turned out not to have been such a bad thing after all. As we got moving again it started to drizzle. Then it rained. Then it poured. Finally buckets of it. Luckily we hadn't even got out of the lake side wood!

Well, having lived like a local for so long he did what all the locals would do. He turned round and we went back to the car! If he'd not been on them swings for so long, we'd have been miles around the lake and probably looked like drowned rats when we got back to the car park.

This is one of the sensible swings. The other was just a rope and a bit of branch. It didn't come out!

As it was we were able to turn up at the Kirkstile, looking fashionably dishevelled, in time for soup and a sandwich and a pint of Kirkstile Gold.

Io and I steamed ourselves in front of the fire.

His madness sometimes has method in it. (To miss quote Hamlet.) (I am an educated type of dog, you know.)